1. Technical Field
The present specification describes a liquid discharging head and an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, a liquid discharging head and an image forming apparatus including the liquid discharging head for discharging liquid onto a recording medium to form an image on the recording medium.
2. Discussion of the Background
An image forming apparatus, such as a copier, a printer, a facsimile machine, a plotter, or a multifunction printer having at least one of copying, printing, scanning, and facsimile functions, typically forms an image on a recording medium (e.g., a sheet) by a liquid discharging method. Thus, for example, a liquid discharging head (e.g., a recording head) included in a liquid discharging device discharges liquid (e.g., an ink drop) onto a conveyed sheet, and the liquid is then adhered to the sheet to form an image on the sheet.
Currently, there is market demand for an image forming apparatus capable of forming an image at high speed. To accommodate such demand, the liquid discharging head may either discharge liquid at a higher rate or may include more nozzles. However, to stably discharge liquid at a higher rate, a carriage on which the liquid discharging head is mounted needs to move at high speed. Accordingly, a powerful motor for driving the carriage that needs to be controlled precisely and a long liquid discharging head having more nozzles are needed.
One example of such long liquid discharging head includes a piezoelectric actuator including a plurality of piezoelectric elements arranged on a base. In each of the plurality of piezoelectric elements, a plurality of piezoelectric element columns is arranged in such a manner that a groove is provided between adjacent piezoelectric element columns.
Generally, a dicing blade may be used to form such grooves in the piezoelectric elements adhered to the base in such a manner that a particular clearance is provided between the adjacent piezoelectric elements. However, when a center of the dicing blade does not correspond to a center of the clearance, for example, when the center of the dicing blade is substantially shifted from the center of the clearance, the dicing blade may be obliquely inserted into the clearance, degrading processing quality of the clearance and consequently imparting instability to the drive provided by the piezoelectric element columns.
To address this problem, a width of the clearance between the adjacent piezoelectric elements may be made equal to a width of the dicing blade so as not to form the groove in the clearance. Alternatively, widths of the plurality of piezoelectric elements may be identical and widths of the clearances may also be identical. In this case, the piezoelectric elements need to be manufactured and arranged on the base with high precision. However, as a practical matter such high manufacturing precision is difficult to achieve.
Obviously, such degraded processing quality of the clearance and unstable drive performance of the piezoelectric element columns are undesirable, and accordingly, there is a need for a technology to prevent such degraded processing quality of the clearance and such unstable drive performance of the piezoelectric element columns, even when the piezoelectric elements and the clearances are not manufactured and arranged with the desired high dimensional precision.